If you have “Looking for new Opportunities” where your job title used to be, you are doing yourself a high disservice.
LinkedIn is a respected business social media tool. You want to do just that, use LinkedIn to help you. By having “Looking for new Opportunities” in your title, you are not letting people know what you do and what industry you work in. People are not motivated to click on your profile to take the time to see what you have done in the past.
In these competitive times, you want to have your LinkedIn profile work for you, not against you.
If you were in Sales, and in transition. Use your title to say what you are “High achieving Sales Professional”, then in the body of your summary, you should certainly state your recent achievements, what you are good at, and at the end, say you are currently looking for a great new opportunity. This way you are not misleading anyone, but you are not pushing away people from viewing your profile because you are in between jobs.
If you were working in an Engineering role, your title may be “Highly Technical Mechanical Engineer with excellent Project Management experience”. You have 120 characters to use your title as your tag line. Use it to your advantage. Remember, say what you are. Then use the summary to speak about you and state you are looking for your next new role to make a difference for your new employer.
If you are looking to change industries, you should parlay what you have done in the past with what will attract new views from people in your desired industry. “Excellent Mechanical Engineer adding value to Water/Waste Water, Industrial and Energy industries”. If you were an Oil/Gas Engineer, you need to show how your skills are transferable to other industries like the ones mentioned above (I know Energy is also Oil/Gas, but I would keep that in too.) Because I know you would be.
Don’t forget how awesome you did in your last job. If you have been out of work for a while, I know it is tough to “feel it” when you are not “feeling it”. But push forward and make those positive edits to your profile so you will put your best self out there.
The issue is much more fundamental than that – it’s the psyche of the employers. Irrespective of the job market (recession for example) or the circumstance in which the seeker were made redundant, employers always hunt those who are employed, as some sort of professional ‘insurance certificate’. So I would not state openly in the profile “looking for new opportunities”, but tweak the back office of the profile which is visible to recruiters, disclosing they are open to offers, actively looking etc.